Other forms: spoons
A spoon is a small tool with a round end, used for eating soup or stirring tea. A teaspoon, stir with a spoon, a wooden spoon.
The shape has barely changed in thousands of years because it cannot be improved much. A wooden spoon is also the booby prize for coming last. Born with a silver spoon means born rich. Note that the Old English word meant a chip or sliver of wood, which is what the first ones were.
1nounspoonA small tool with a round end for eating or stirring.
“Stir your tea with a spoon until the sugar dissolves.”
Patterna spoon of / a spoonful of + noun · a wooden / silver / tea spoon · stir with a spoon · spoon sth into
spoon is a utensil.
SPOON → a little MOON you eat with
A round silver spoon lies on the table at night and catches the moon in its bowl: a tiny moon you eat your soup with.
hooks ontomoon
Old English spon meant a chip or sliver of wood. The first spoons were shaped from exactly that.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)peH- — chip, shaving, log, length of wood
Proto-Germanic
*spēnuz — chip, flake, shaving
Proto-West Germanic
*spānu
Old English
spōn — sliver, chip of wood, shaving
Middle English
spoon
English, today
spoon
Built from
From Middle English spoon, spoune, spone, spon (“spoon, chip of wood”), from Old English spōn (“sliver, chip of wood, shaving”), from Proto-West Germanic spānu, from Proto-Germanic spēnuz (“chip, flake, shaving”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)peH- (“chip, shaving, log, length of wood”). Cognate with Scots spun, spon (“spoon, shingle”), West Frisian spoen (“chip”), Dutch spaan (“chip, flinders”), German Span (“chip, flake, shaving”), Swedish spån (“chip, flake”), Norwegian Nynorsk spon (“chip, spoon”), Faroese spónur (“wood chip; spoon”), Ancient Greek σφήν (“wedge”)(though the connection to the Greek is likely impossible by modern reconstructions of PIE). Eclipsed non-native Middle English cuculer, coclear (“spoon”), from cuculer, cuceler, cucler, borrowed from cochlear. The "metaphoric unit of personal energy" sense was coined by Christine Miserandino in 2003 (see spoon theory).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA